


Attribution

by dissembler



Category: Eye Candy (TV)
Genre: Antagonism, Enemies Forced to Work Together - Needing Help From A Villain To Defeat Another Villain, M/M, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:20:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler





	Attribution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/gifts).

“_**Attribution**: Attribution is the process of establishing who is behind a hack. Often, attribution is the most difficult part of responding to a major breach since experienced hackers may hide behind layers of online services that mask their true location and identity. Many incidents, such as the Sony hack, may never produce any satisfactory attribution._” — The Motherboard e-Glossary of Cyber Terms and Hacking Lingo, vice.com

  
Babysitting ex-or-perhaps-still-current-but-we-don’t-want-to-think-about-that-hackers is, annoyingly, mostly paperwork.

It’s late, just them and the night shift, and he and George have been working on the preliminaries of a new case. Trying to locate the market for the ill-gotten gains from a hasty chip-off attack at the offices of some PLC in Manhattan. It’s old school cyber work, the kind that takes a long time but usually doesn’t get him shot or blown up. He’s not that sure he wouldn’t swap imminent danger police work for this though if imminent danger police work would let him leave the office at a reasonable time and mean that his doodling on paperwork wouldn’t gain a narrative thread.

If he were doing imminent danger police work it also wouldn’t be his problem when George gets suspiciously quiet.

He finishes joining a line of dots into some bizarre constellation and knocks on the desk, “What is it, George?”

George jumps a little and scrambles to look like he’d actually been doing something for the past five minutes instead of staring into space and looking worried.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ve set the trackers for the keywords on all the forums I can think of as well as the ones on your list so we’re good to go it’s just, uh.” He pulls a face. “There’s one less forum now.”

Tommy narrows his eyes and suggests, “Good?” which of course is when George says the age-old cop movie phrase: “You’re going to want to see this,” and it dawns on Tommy that this night is about to get even longer.

George is navigating to his own Dropbox account when Tommy slides around to stand next to him. He goes to a folder called ‘For Tommy’ and then to a big .PNG called ‘siteprenuke’ which Tommy decides is ominous. He doesn’t know where this is going but George, like Lindy, is rarely wrong about what is and isn’t worth Tommy’s time and attention so he waits for George to click on it.

It’s a screengrab and it’s your usual forum layout, with one wide column of posts in the centre-right attached to user info on the left. It’s not built for style or aesthetics, it’s not clean or white or modern. It’s also super illegal. The two top posts are a call for carding advice and then a brag about the size of the user’s — D4N73Z_INF, he jots it down for further investigation — botnet.

“You said it went down?” he asks.

George nods. “Yeah, and I think the middle post is why.”

Tommy glances down, he’d dismissed it initially as just some example of ID fraud but looking closer he sees— “Cast it to the monitor,” he blurts and when George does he finds himself having to reconcile the subject line of the post and the face in the ID.

_Bubonic_ and the kid from his empty apartment.

“Somebody doxxed Bubonic,” George proclaims. “Or tried to.”

“I know this kid,” Tommy says, dragging a hand over his face. “I’ve seen him before. It’s Bubonic.” It’s fucking _Bubonic_.

“Jesus, really?”

Tommy nods. “The night Bubonic put up my apartment as a free-for-all and almost had my dog euthanized.” He’d been so close, he’d been right in front of him, he’s pulled his goddamn gun on him. “He put his hands up, he looked scared and I fell for it.”

“Charlie Black,” George says. “Like Black Plague. And did you read the post?”

He does now. It’s a call to arms, asks if anyone ‘wants to pay Bubonic a visit’ and ends with a string of knife emojis. It’s a simple threat and Tommy’s hit by the instinct to find the poster and tell them no, tell them Bubonic is his which is stupid and reckless. Bubonic isn’t his, Bubonic is… Bubonic is a murderer looking at a pretty hefty jail sentence.

Tommy glances at the user behind the post, tuns to George. “What can you tell me about ZikaX?”

“Unfortunately not much, his presence is limited but he’s made some posts about hacking traffic lights and he claimed the bridge malfunction last month but I can’t verify any of it. Whoever he is it looks like he has Bubonic scared.” George drops the screengrab and brings up a section of running code. “The site went down minutes after this was posted but it didn’t just disappear. He unravelled it. This one spewed user data as it went down and it looks like Bubonic got access to every similar domain and set up denials upon denials. This was scorched Earth.”

“So you think this guy’s for real?”

“To _find_ Bubonic’s ID and _post_ it?” George yelps. “Absolutely. He’s gotta be for real, and he’s gotta be both really good and really, really nuts.”

Tommy’s reaching for the laptop when another voice speaks, low and clear and familiar and Tommy opts to grab first and ask questions later, crossing the floor in record time and pressing the owner of the voice — pressing _Bubonic_ — against the nearest pillar with an arm pulled up behind his back and a hand around his right wrist up next to his head.

He thinks about how cold Bubonic’s coat is and realises he’s too close, pressed in against Bubonic’s back like he would someone resisting. But Bubonic isn’t struggling. Bubonic has no weapon in his hands to drop. Bubonic just says, “Straight into the police brutality, I see,” and Tommy can imagine the curve of that up-turned mouth around the words, wants to get it to fall, so he tightens his grip around Bubonic’s wrist and snarls, “You’re under arrest.”

Bubonic gives a quiet laugh and turns his head to meet Tommy’s eyes over his shoulder. “For what, Detective. You don’t have anything concrete. All you have is a photo of a driver’s licence and someone else’s word that that’s who you want.” He shrugs despite Tommy’s grip on him. “I’m just a citizen. I could bring charges.”

Tommy manhandles him away from the pillar to turn him around, lets his hands go in favour of pressing him back into the concrete with an arm across his chest aware even as he does it that Bubonic is right. That even if Tommy were to get his cuffs out and arrest him properly Bubonic would just walk, the victim of some weird ID fraud, protected by the layers and layers of code and failsafes and pseudonyms that have always helped him.

Tommy doesn’t let go, can’t, says, “You’re Bubonic,” anyway and Bubonic brings his now free hands up in surrender, his face changing to how he’d looked in Tommy’s apartment, cringing away from the gun. And then it melts away, the smirk comes back and he cants his head to the side, looking at Tommy with satisfied eyes.

“Again,” he says, even. “You have that on the word of an unknown entity on a criminal forum. Besides, the ID isn’t real.”

Tommy feels his shoulders fall and he glances around to George who’s frozen, standing at the desk and staring at Bubonic.

“You didn’t check the ID?” Tommy asks, incredulous, and George squeaks about how he hadn’t thought Tommy would’ve appreciated him breaking the law before asking him first which Tommy can’t really refute and so he grabs Bubonic by the arm and walks him over to another desk, holding him while he types the codes of the driver’s licence into the keyboard there.

Bubonic doesn’t fight him, just leans against the table while Tommy waits for the database to load, seemingly content with Tommy’s inability to let him go for even a second. If anything, when Tommy glances to him, he looks amused, almost indulgent and it sets Tommy’s nerves on edge.

Eventually, the database stops sifting and Tommy tears his eyes back to the screen and —

“Charles Black, 79,” he reads, hearing the disappointment colour his voice even though he hadn’t expected anything different. Of course, it wasn’t actually going to be Bubonic. “Lives in a house in Bushwick and has done for the past forty years.”

George whistles and starts, “Why—“ but Tommy rides over him, using his grip on Bubonic’s arm to force him to answer, “If it’s not you why nuke the site?”

Bubonic’s answering smile is slow and knowing. “I would imagine _Bubonic_ destroyed the site to make this… pretender think he was rattled.”

Tommy’s had suspects use third person when he’s had them dead to rights before and it’s always infuriating but Bubonic seems to know how to get under his skin because he looks Tommy straight in the eyes as he says it, taunting him.

“So you’re here for protection,” Tommy says and Bubonic laughs like it was shocked out of him, batting Tommy’s hand away from his arm and pulling the keyboard to him.

Tommy slams a hand over his, stilling his already mile-a-minute fingers. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Helping you save a life, Detective,” Bubonic tells him. “ZikaX posted something else before—“ there’s only a half-second hesitation but Tommy catches it — “before _Bubonic_ took the site down. If I may…”

Tommy lets go, taking a step back to get both Bubonic and the screen in his eye-line, not taking any chances, and Bubonic opens a browser window, logs into a Dropbox and Tommy has a brief moment of hope that he’s fucked up until he sees that there’s only one single file in it. A burner account and a single PNG. Bubonic clicks on it and another forum post shows up on the screen. Just a line of text: BUBONIC FRIDAY NITE. CCU, L8R

“Today’s Friday,” Tommy says. “You think he’s going to go after Mr Black tonight.”

“I think it’s pretty late now, Detective,” Bubonic answers, soft and even, like he isn’t talking about an innocent old man he might have set up to get killed. “But there’s a good chance you can catch him.”

Tommy’s on the phone to NYPD switch before he finishes the sentence, grabbing Bubonic again when it looks like he’s making to leave. “No you don’t,” he says and then the call connects and he explains to the switchboard that he needs a tac team response to Charles Black’s address, quiet as possible. When the woman on the other end asks what they’re looking for Tommy lies, says the CCU found a brag on a forum about a theft to be carried out tonight and that the officers should treat the subject as possibly armed.

When he finishes the call with a promise that he’ll meet them there Tommy looks up to see Bubonic watching him, head to the side, assessing.

“That wasn’t the truth, Detective Calligan,” he says and Tommy ignores him to tell George to go home.

He says, “If I need you again for the case I’ll call but I don’t want you involved in this,” but George is already nodding violently and shoving his laptop into his bag.

“Yeah,” he says as he dodges past, giving Tommy and Bubonic as wide a berth as possible. “You two should uh, you look like you should be alone. Good luck, Detective.”

“Thank you, George,” Bubonic drawls and it makes George pick up the pace with a yell, high-tailing it out of the building as Bubonic laughs.

“That wasn’t nice, Bubonic,” Tommy bites out, pocketing his phone and his keys — unendingly grateful that being a cop forces you to get good a doing everything one-handed pretty fast — and pulling Bubonic with him. “You’re coming with me.”

He knows he should keep Bubonic here with the night shift but until this ZikaX guy is caught and interrogated and he and Shaw can assess whether his evidence is enough to arrest Bubonic properly he’s not letting Bubonic out of his sight. Even if that does mean dragging him to a potential crime scene. Wait… He brings them up abruptly just before the door. “Can you be sure he hasn’t hacked us, that this isn’t a trap?”

“The CCU isn’t an easy hack anymore, Detective,” Bubonic answers and Tommy still doesn’t get why he isn’t fighting the hold he has on his arm. Anyone else would’ve pushed him off by now but Bubonic doesn’t seem to care, just lets himself be pushed and pulled. Looking at Tommy with that smirk.

“Lindy hacked us,” Tommy points out.

Another shrug. “Lindy had good reasons, and a key.” Bubonic leans close, all wide blue eyes and soft-looking hair, and his voice turns confessional, “I wasn’t about to stop her seeing through your lies now was I?” He’s too close, Tommy almost lets go to put some space between them but he can’t quite make himself move as Bubonic continues, eyes turning a little manic, “Come on now, Detective. Do you think I’d let just anyone in here? You’re mine. No one else’s.” He pulls away, as far as he can still tethered by Tommy’s arm and his face clears, goes back to cool and calm and superior. “I own this place.”

It hits him then, in the wake of those words, that change, it hits him like it should have hit him the second Bubonic walked in: this man is dangerous. That he’s the biggest threat to the Cyber Unit. That this man has a body count and a vendetta. But Tommy still can’t let go of him, and Bubonic still doesn’t ask him to.

Bubonic lets him think for a second before he must get bored or something and says, “To the rescue, Detective?”

In retaliation, Tommy almost yanks his arm out of its socket pulling him to the car.

———————

Being in a small space with Bubonic starts driving him crazy by the time he’s pulled out of his parking spot because Bubonic is too quiet still, too pliant and easy and Tommy can’t stand it so he says, “How are you so sure he can’t hack us?” just to get Bubonic to stop looking ahead and turn to him.

It works, Bubonic angles himself toward Tommy and all that attention makes it hard to focus on the road and the SatNav, the late traffic that never fucking stops in this city. Congratulations, he thinks, you played yourself.

“I’m the patches in your firewall,” Bubonic says simply. “Found them, walled them up with me inside and now, obviously, I monitor your network.”

“Why not just hack us?”

Bubonic laughs, faces forward again. “You didn’t see the rest of ZikaX’s final post did you?” he teases. “You just saw Friday and jumped into action.”

“What?”

“Bubonic tonight, CCU, later,” Bubonic intones. “Looks like my pretender was thinking a similar thing.”

Tommy blinks, trying to catch up. “He’s gonna come after us?” he asks.

Bubonic shrugs. “If you don’t catch him tonight he might.”

He’s still not sure what this has to do with Bubonic’s restraint though so he asks again.

“I don’t have to hack you, Tommy. I have you right where I want you. Now, my pretender probably sees this as a weakness. Something I’ve failed to do. Which is why he’s threatening you. But he won’t get you, Tommy.”

“Stop saying my name like that,” he says. It slips out before he can engage his brain to stop it and sure enough Bubonic laughs, humourless and dangerous.

“Why, Tommy? It’s just your name. I’ll even tell you mine so we’re fair: it’s Charlie.”

Tommy scoffs. “Sure it is. We’re far from even.”

“You’re right,” Bubonic says. “Thomas Calligan, born April ’87. Mother Amanda, father James. Not a native New Yorker—“

“Alright stop, stop. I get it.” He focuses on following the SatNav and fixes his breathing. “You don’t need to show me just how uneven we are.”

“Records like that are small fry,” Bubonic continues and Tommy digs his nails into his palms at ten and two. “Easy to get, easy to change. A miracle more people don’t exploit it.”

Tommy scowls and pulls into the road they want, muttering, “A miracle I’m thankful for every day.”

Bubonic smiles. “Wishing your job away there, Detective.”

“Most of us wish we didn’t have to do what we do,” Tommy says, pulling over and it’s like a switch is flipped. Bubonic’s smile falls.

Tommy’s out of the car and locking the doors before he hears the response.

The NYPD are already done. He leans against the car while a cop who introduces herself as Sandra asks for his ID and then gives him the rundown. They’d arrived to find the front door open and Mr Black, shaken but okay. They’d asked him what had happened and he’d started talking about a man in a mask with a knife who kept asking where ‘he’ was.

“Thought you said you had a tip-off about a robbery,” Sandra says. “This guy was looking for some_one_ not some_thing_.” And then she looks to his side and into the car and says, “Damn, your partner doesn’t make any noise does he?” and Tommy glances back to the — yes, empty car — and forces himself to smile and say ‘no he doesn’t’ in a way that doesn’t make it immediately obvious that he’s just lost a very dangerous criminal by being stupid enough to think a car lock could hold him. That he isn’t kicking himself for losing two hackers in one night after getting so close.

He excuses himself a moment later when his phone starts buzzing.

“Thank you for an interesting night, Detective,” comes Bubonic’s low amused voice and Tommy bites back a violent noise.

“You’re still in danger,” he says, fast. “He could be following you. He had a knife.”

“Why Tommy,” Bubonic purrs his name and Tommy tries to ignore the jolt of something that shoots through him at the sound. “You sound almost concerned.”

“Can’t arrest you if you’re dead,” Tommy retorts, mean and raw and god he wishes he’d have just arrested him in the first place, given it a shot, but he knows that watching Bubonic go free would have hurt more than having him escape. Escaping’s what criminals do. It keeps the lines fixed in his head, reminds him who he’s dealing with, again.

“As sweet as that is—“

He can’t let Bubonic go. This can’t be the end of the episode, there has to be more. Another chance to catch both of them, ZikaX and Bubonic. He cuts over him, “Let me help you. He’s just going to try again so let me help you before that happens.”

He hears something that sounds a little like a sigh. “How do you propose to do that?”

Tommy nods to the air, to the crime scene that’s just wrapping up as they ask Mr Black if he’s got any relatives to stay with or if he wants an officer on the door until they can get a locksmith. It’s late enough now that it’s early, and he thinks of what he’ll tell Shaw, if anything. Wonders whether George can be relied upon to keep his secrets if the next time he comes in no-one says anything about Bubonic.

He thinks about what Bubonic wants, how to keep himself involved. He assesses the options present and the implications Bubonic has made without knowing.

He wonders for a second if any of this is real.

Tommy knows Bubonic likes to mess with him, that’s always been clear, but the fear on Mr Black’s face when Tommy had looked over to him had been real and he thinks this is too much to be just another trick. Thinks that it doesn’t make sense to be fake but thinks that even if it is he can try to turn it around on Bubonic anyway.

Tommy thinks of Lindy, thinks of how badly it went last time but how close they got. Thinks about how different Lindy is to Bubonic and says, “We set a trap for him.”

This time he’s sure he hears a sharp intake of breath before Bubonic says, “You want me to play bait, Detective?” but he sounds interested and Tommy thinks he can’t buy him with an offer of resources so tries the next best thing and backtracks into reverse psychology, plays coy, says, “Hey man, if you want to risk it…”

It works. Bubonic says, “There’s a persistent attack on your firewall. I can let him in to find something.”

Tommy smiles. “He’ll come running,” he says. “And then we catch him.”

There’s a pause on the line and then Bubonic says, soft and sharp at once, “We, Detective Calligan? If I see anyone else from your CCU I will leave, danger or no danger,” and Tommy thinks honesty might be the best policy and responds, “We’ll catch you anyway, only a matter of time.”

It earns him a laugh, fond again, almost indulgent again, and Tommy adds a note about tonal inconsistency to his mental file on Bubonic as he says, “Of course. Make your plans, Detective. I’ll be in touch.”

The line goes dead before Tommy can respond, leaving him alone on a side-walk surrounded by cops and asking himself what the _fuck_ _just_ _happened_.

——————

Tommy ends up spending an hour promising Sandra that he’ll keep them and Mr Black updated on the case and so miring himself further and further into a web of lies that are absolutely going to come back and bite him in the ass before he gets to drive home in a car that seems empty now without Bubonic in the passenger seat.

When he crawls into bed and can’t sleep he just stares at the ceiling and thinks, _I should tell Shaw_. He should tell Shaw tomorrow, let her tell him how to deal with Bubonic and ZikaX but he can’t. She would remove him from the investigation, say he’s too close and give it to Yaeger who’s never failed to tell her about contact with their most wanted, who wasn’t part of the case that led to the death of their key witness.

But he still feels that instinctive No climbing up his throat when he thinks about handing Bubonic over, watching him get processed and jailed and be gone from Tommy’s life which is really all he should want but finds, at this moment, that he doesn’t.

Besides, he rationalises, Bubonic had said he’d walk if he saw anyone other than Tommy at their trap and oh _shit_ now he has to work out how to avoid doing his actual job tomorrow and set up a sting with one cop and one psycho hacktivist instead.

All in all, by the time he’s worked out most of a plan and gotten his heart rate down all he gets is three hours sleep, seeing Bubonic’s gray-blue eyes when he closes his own and dreaming of those fingers fast over keys and waking up alone and hot and _mortified_.

He throws himself out of bed and into an extremely cold shower and goes into work early for two reasons, one: the bed was taunting him with flashes of the dream he had undeniably been having and two: because he has a lot of extra work to do now and if Yeager and Shaw notice they certainly don’t ask and he prays that they can’t tell either of his reasons.

Setting up the fake sting involves yet more paperwork, making up dates and times and faking document creation dates and owners. He hopes ZikaX doesn’t know much about police procedure because he’s not very good at this, the fabrication.

He tells Bubonic as much when his phone rings at half one, hissing it quietly and thanking Christ that he’s alone at his desk.

“Good afternoon to you too, Detective,” Bubonic chides in response but since Tommy’s mouse starts moving without him anyway so he figures he’s not really annoyed. “This should be enough to send ZikaX into quite the frenzy.”

“Any luck finding him?” he asks and he doesn’t have to see him to know that Bubonic is shrugging.

“Who says I was looking?”

Tommy just waits.

“He’s in New York,” Bubonic says eventually. “But we’d guessed that.”

Tommy asks “You can’t track him further?” to be a dick and then freezes, still unsure how much he can push this, until Bubonic laughs softly down the phone.

“It’s not difficult to hide yourself on the internet, Tommy. Even you know that.”

“Gee, thanks,” Tommy returns, sarcastic.

“You’re very welcome,” Bubonic says and Tommy can practically hear the smirk through the speaker of his phone and he can imagine it, see it clear as day, curled lip and almost indulgent eyes. “The attempts on your network are still happening, I can add an exception to the wall to let him though, hopefully he’ll think it’s his genius rather than mine.”

Tommy bites his lip against commenting on that. “Add the exception,” he says, “and then—“

“Already done, Detective. Our boy is jumping on your forgeries as we speak. I’ll be at your favourite coffee shop at six, meet me there.”

The line, again, goes dead before Tommy can say anything else and leaving him muttering “fuck’s sake” into empty air.

“You good there, Tommy?” someone says and Tommy jumps, looks up to see that it’s Yeager and Tommy really doesn’t like lying to these people, his friends and colleagues, but he forces a smile and says yeah, he’s cool and blames the swearing on the company who’s shit he’s actually supposed to be finding. “Their InfoSec don’t want to play ball,” he lies. “You know.”

It seems to be enough, Yeager commiserates with him then goes back to his own desk and by the looks of it Shaw’s wound up in phone meetings so when the time comes Tommy just jots down “POTENTIAL LEAD ON CHIP-OFF” on a post-it, smacks it on his desk and takes off, gun at his hip and phone in his pocket.

He’s halfway to his favourite place when it hits him to be worried that Bubonic knows his favourite place. He wonders what else Bubonic knows about him, how he knows it. Is there a tracker on his phone or his laptop? Hell, what kind of access did Bubonic have to let strangers into his place to take his stuff? Does he still have it?

Tommy’s still thinking that maybe he should just arrest the creepy fuck when he sees him in the corner of the coffeeshop and strides over.

“Detective,” Bubonic greets and looks up at him with — yep, those gray-blue eyes and Tommy’s flashing back to waking up hot and sticky and okay, maybe crazy’s catching.

“He take the bait?” he asks, sitting down and trying to focus on the matter actually at hand.

Thankfully Bubonic doesn’t say anything more in that half-flirting tone, just pulls out a battered-looking ToughBook and types fast. He turns the screen to show Tommy the access lines and Tommy tries to ignore the way his long, pale fingers look as he points them out. “He got in, downloaded the files and logged straight back out. Didn’t even bother to plant malware.”

Tommy murmurs, “Well, I guess there’s that,” and he sits back, looks at Bubonic properly, past the haze of shame. He looks so young, here in the coffee shop with his laptop and his thin fingers and his bright eyes, narrow body. What’s he going to do if this goes south? If ZikaX brings a knife, or a gun to this party and takes his chance? Can he fight? Is he sure he can… “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Bubonic turns the laptop back to face him, slides it shut and leans on it, blinks at Tommy with a keen interest in his eyes. “Odd time to ask, Detective. Little late.”

“We’re off the books,” Tommy tells him, not sure what he wants to happen now but sure he wants Bubonic to know, to have a chance. “I can’t guarantee your safety.”

“I know,” Bubonic says, slow. Narrowing his eyes. “Is this only just—“

Tommy interrupts whatever armor-piercing question Bubonic’s gearing up to. “Answer the question.”

“ZikaX posted just as you were walking up, different forum, same name. He said we should be ready for something ‘truly explosive’.”

_That’s not an answer_, Tommy thinks, and then “Are you serious? I’m calling this. There is no way I’m letting either of us anywhere near this place if there’s a bomb.”

Bubonic reaches out, grabs his wrist — dimly Tommy thinks it’s the first time Bubonic has initiated contact, voluntarily touched him, and registers the sharp shock of something that lurches through him before he manages to stamp it down, to focus — and says “Don’t worry, Detective. It shouldn’t come to that. While he was accessing the CCU, I was accessing him. He has Apple products, unwise, and he hasn’t turned FindMy off, even less wise. Rookie errors from the man who would be king.”

Tommy does the mental math. “You’ve known his location for _four and a half hours_ and didn’t think to tell me?”

Bubonic lets his wrist go to put his hands up again, the same mock surrender. “Caught. He clearly likes to be prepared, he’s been at our warehouse for the past two.”

“The meeting’s set for eight, that’s…” Tommy whistles. “This guy is dedicated to taking you out.”

Bubonic slides his laptop back into the simple black messenger bag he’d taken it out of and smiles. “One of the hazards of my reputation is that others seem to want to build their own by dragging it down.”

Tommy thinks about asking if this has happened before, and what happened to the guy who tried it but he doesn’t, not sure he wants to know. He says instead, “So he’s there now and he won’t be expecting us.”

“Exactly,” Bubonic says brightly. “Now, Detective, may we catch my would-be usurper?” and Tommy thinks, not for the first time, that maybe he should have had his head examined after that beat down because he’s getting up and saying, “I’ll get my car.”

—————

  
The warehouse is big, multiple small rooms all circling the main one. They approach from the back, on foot so he can’t see them coming and they follow the little dot on Bubonic’s rooted tablet. This close to the end of it Tommy can see that this guy’s amateur hour, confident that he’s so much smarter than Bubonic and five steps ahead. Not aware that his strings are being pulled so completely.

Bubonic sticks to Tommy’s side, murmuring directions until Tommy stops them just before they reach the dot and says, “You stay here, out of sight.”

For a moment Bubonic looks mutinous, but then he smiles and leans close to whisper, “Be careful, Detective Calligan,” and Tommy thinks there’s no mistaking the look he’s getting here as he rolls his eyes and unholsters his gun, pushing open the last corridor door and turning.

“NYPD, hands up!” he yells and ZikaX — a kid who looks no more than seventeen — grabs for something on the desk.

“Don’t come any closer,” he screams, “or I’ll do it!” and Tommy shifts his grip on the gun to put his hands up and say, calmer than he feels, “You do that and we both die.”

ZikaX looks stricken but he says, “Better than jail,” and Tommy has no idea what to do here, is rapidly assessing if he could reach the kid before he pushes the button, preparing himself to try when a phone rings and ZikaX fumbles the device out of his pocket, lifts it shaking up to his ear.

In the silence between the ringing stopping and the caller speaking, Tommy can hear his own heart pounding and when he hears Bubonic’s voice, tinny through the speakers, he feels like his legs might give out.

Tommy hears, “—on Speaker, thank you. Hello, Detective Calligan. Now, Jeremy. You won’t recognise me by voice, but the Detective will. I’m Bubonic, it’s nice to finally chat.”

ZikaX — _Jeremy_ — is looking at his phone like it might bite him, holding it far from his face so that Tommy can hear Bubonic continue.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Jeremy. You’ve lost, and honestly, you’re not that good a hacker so the NYPD really doesn’t need to arrest you. Detective Calligan is going to leave this building, unharmed, and you are going to be free to go on with your life.” Bubonic laughs. “You can even try to come after me again, if you like.”  
  
Jeremy stiffens and says, “I’ll kill him. I have a gun too,” and Tommy’s regretting ever pointing his gun away when Bubonic says, through the phone, “You know how much time cop killers get. You’re surrounded now but Jeremy, if you take me off speaker I can tell you where the gap is in their perimeter,” and Tommy’s never seen anyone move as fast as Jeremy does to bring the phone up to his ear.

Tommy lets him go, has to, he’s still gripping the detonator and he waves it at Tommy warningly as he goes and when he’s gone and Bubonic steps out of another office Tommy yells, “What the fuck was that?”

Bubonic smirks. “Relax,” he says, holding out the tablet, which Tommy grabs, “I sent him to a dead end. You can catch him if you run.”

Tommy’s already sprinting and yelling back, “He still has the fucking detonator, get the fuck out!”

He takes the stairs two at a time, following the dot and hoping to God Bubonic is getting himself out rather than following and in the end, when he bumps into Jeremy by the only working exit just as the fucker presses the button he thinks _if I die I am going to haunt him to death_ as the shockwave sends them flying.

————

First Tommy wakes up slowly, pulse pounding and ears ringing and he feels a hand on his cheek, sees a familiar face swimming in front of him and then it all goes black again.

The next time he wakes up he’s in an ambulance, his hands are bandaged and his side feels like he’s been stepped on by an elephant but he’s alive and okay and Shaw is telling him, vibrating with rage, that they have Jeremy Lamb in custody, that Tommy had better be ready to explain all the property damage and why the kid keeps muttering about _Bubonic_ when he gets into the office tomorrow and that Yeager is at his car ready to drive him home.

————

Much later, when Tommy is sprawled out on his couch watching reruns having told Yeager thanks but no thanks to the offer of him staying to make sure Tommy doesn’t die, he finds himself wondering if Bubonic got caught in the blast, if he’s okay. He wonders if Bubonic will check up on him, after this, or if they’ll just go back to being enemies again, with screens and proxies and whole reams of bandwidth separating them. He thinks of Bubonic’s laugh, his fond almost-indulgence when Tommy got something wrong or right, and thinks he’ll miss it.

He’s still thinking about it when there’s a knock at his door that sends his heart rate skyrocketing and he almost trips over dull, stiff, too slow legs getting to the door.

Bubonic’s on him before he’s got the door half-open, sliding through the gap and pressing in close, pulling Tommy’s mouth the little ways down to meet his and Tommy hisses when Bubonic gets a hand on his side.

He pulls away, pushes Bubonic further into the room and slides the door shut, leans against it, blinking through the ache and trying to convince himself that this is real and not some hallucination from a concussion. “You left pretty quickly,” he says because if he doesn’t he’ll lean back in and kiss him again.

Bubonic licks his split bottom lip and well, that answers that question. He’s got a little blood in his hairline too, dust on his black coat. He looks grazed and cold and his hair is a mess and he's looking at Tommy like he wants to devour him but he manages to say, “I wasn’t sure if you would arrest me too, wasn’t willing to risk it,” and make it sound cold and detached.

But Tommy remembers immediately after the explosion, when all there was was pain and fire and ringing in his ears. He remembers Bubonic’s fingers on his face, mouth moving around words Tommy couldn’t quite hear. He remembers Bubonic checking his skull for obvious wounds and setting his head back down on the concrete after he’d clearly decided that Tommy was fine, that he’d live.

“ZikaX will talk,” Tommy says and Bubonic steps closer, saying, “then you’d better think of a good lie,” before slotting their mouths together again, hard and sharp. He presses on Tommy’s bruised ribs again to make him gasp, uses the opportunity to deepen it, turn it wet and hot and desperate.

Tommy lets him for a minute and then he grabs Bubonic by the lapels to twist them around, smacks Bubonic’s hand from his side and Bubonic makes a low noise, opts to throw his arms over Tommy’s shoulders and pull him down again so he can bite at Tommy’s lower lip.

_This doesn’t make sense,_ Tommy wants to say, _we should hate each other_, but Bubonic is practically writhing against him and Tommy’s a red-blooded open-minded guy so his mind shorts out and he gets with the program, gets his hands on Bubonic’s hips and starts tugging the shirt out of his pants.

Bubonic makes another low, dangerous sound when Tommy finally gets his hand to the scorching hot skin of his stomach and it’s all the warning Tommy gets before Bubonic hits him in the side again, and he tears away to take two steps back and grit out a curse.

“What the fuck?” he manages but then Bubonic’s crowded close again saying, “It did look like you landed badly,” and Tommy wants to wipe that smirk off his face so he pushes him back against the wall and starts tearing at his jacket, shoving it off his shoulders. Bubonic shrugs it off obligingly and they stare at each other, panting into the silence of Tommy’s apartment with all his new minimal furniture.

It lasts a second before Tommy leans back in and Bubonic gets hands into his shirt that turn to claws, tearing at the buttons and then scratching at the skin that gets revealed and Tommy murmurs a “Fuck” before Bubonic breaks away from the kiss to bite at Tommy’s throat. “Did it occur to you even once during all this how trusting you were being?” he asks, soft and low and persuasive, shifting his hips until Tommy loses his mind a little. “I could have let you die, could’ve locked you in and pressed the button myself. Two birds, one stone. Did you think about that, Tommy?”

He hadn’t. He hadn’t thought about it at all, he’d thought Bubonic was being the trusting one, that it would be Tommy who twisted and hauled him in if anyone was going to break the truce. Bubonic can clearly read it on his face because he’s laughing, low and delighted and Tommy feels him shake with it. He tightens his grip and Bubonic must’ve landed a little badly himself, pushed by the blast even though he got out faster, because there’s a hitch in the laughter. “Oh, Tommy,” he taunts. “You said it yourself. We’re nowhere near even.”

Tommy believes him, but Bubonic isn’t going anywhere now. He’s just watching Tommy with dark, blown eyes and Tommy can feel the heat rolling off him. He looks like he’s waiting, he feels like anticipation and Tommy wants to wreck him. He can’t arrest him, can’t lock him up and keep him but he can have him like this, can leave a mark like this. He gets a hand into Bubonic’s hair and pulls his head to the side, baring his throat and when Bubonic gasps he marks it down as a win. A minute levelling. He goes for Bubonic’s shirt, makes quick work of the first few buttons before slowing as he gets nearer to where he can see Bubonic’s interest and god his own jeans are torture right now.

The thought distracts him, gives Bubonic the chance to surprise him by grabbing at Tommy’s shirt, getting the wide-open collar and dragging Tommy down to meet him halfway. It’s more a bruising impact than a kiss, more teeth than lips, and Tommy feels his own desperation ratchet up a notch as he gives back as good as he’s getting.  
  
Tommy knows what power is and isn’t, he knows that Bubonic is still winning, that after this Bubonic will walk away and Tommy will realistically be no closer to catching him. All he has is a face to put to the name, a useless attribution. But here and now, in his apartment, boxing Bubonic in against the door, his is close enough to power.

Bubonic settles back against the door, breathing heavily with his shirt half open and skin flushed in the low light of Tommy’s single lamp and this time, Tommy sees the warning when his eyes suddenly open and he catches Bubonic’s wrist before he makes contact and he’s been with some girls who liked it rough but this is new, this is vindictive. Two can play at this game, Tommy thinks and he moves quick, presses against the front of Bubonic’s jeans, arm ready to catch him as the lazy lines of him go tense and he pitches forward, cursing.

With that another floodgate opens, another barrier breaks and Bubonic’s hands are all over him, shoving the shirt down his arms and then changing tack to grab Tommy’s hips and try to pull him closer. His own hips are shifting and Tommy doesn’t even think he knows he’s doing it but it’s telling, it gives away how much he wants this, despite his words, his taunts, despite his hand on Tommy’s bruised side.

Tommy’s never known anyone who made less sense than Bubonic, it makes him want to know what the truth of him is, makes him want to settle in to finding out. He wants to see who Bubonic is when he has no control, when he’s completely given over to sensation in the moment and when he’s fucked out and breathless after it. He’d like to see him land a perfect hit without looking when his coordination’s shot, when all his fire and energy is gone, used up for better things.

He shoves Bubonic back with one hand and keeps pressing the other against Bubonic’s fly, getting a high noise and another curse for his trouble. He works the button open with too much pressure, walking the line between enough and too much until he has Bubonic writhing when he finally gets his hand around him.

By now Bubonic’s hands are clutching and releasing in the fabric of Tommy’s open shirt. “Come on,” he bites out, eyes shut tight but hips still moving, seeking more and Tommy wants him to look, to see this.

He stills, waits until Bubonic whines and opens his eyes and then he gives in, gets into Bubonic’s boxers and wraps a hand around him. Bubonic makes another noise, high and thready and jerks into Tommy’s hand and Tommy thinks, _ohfuck_ and _Jesus_ and starts undoing his own jeans, fumbling and uncoordinated and almost fucking dying when he finally gets his own cock — hard and flushed and fucking _aching_ — against Bubonic’s.

After that it’s mostly sensation, the heavy silken heat of Bubonic’s cock against Tommy’s as they move against each other, chasing friction until it becomes too much and Bubonic sinks his teeth into Tommy’s lip, coming and dragging Tommy with him.

—————

Later, Bubonic will tell him that he doesn’t understand it himself, why he’s here. Why he came over, why he didn’t stay away and Tommy will run a hand through his own hair and shrug, agree that it doesn’t make any sense. Admit that he doesn’t know why he didn’t arrest him at the Cyber Unit or the coffeeshop.

And they won’t make a truce, not yet, but Bubonic won’t leave until the morning and at work the next day Tommy will lie through his teeth and it won’t go back to normal. It’s something else now.


End file.
